To Have and Have Not

Chapter 2

"Draco!"

Draco Malfoy lifted his head off the dark green comforter in surprise; he had fallen asleep while reading. His book, a somewhat legally questionable copy of Dark Arts, Dark Lives, was lying on the bed next to him, face down. His father would almost certainly Crucio him if he saw the book flung so carelessly, particularly face-down and open the way it was. But Lucius wasn't here to witness Draco's mistreatment of the priceless volumes, so the book remained exactly where it had fallen.

"Draco!"

"Oh, Merlin," he mumbled, tossing his blond head back on the pillow dramatically. Since his father had been sent to Azkaban at the beginning of the summer, his mother had been going through a series of mood-swings, starting with periods of frenzied activity and ending with longer periods of inactivity and melancholy. This most recent period had begun its vicious cycle three days ago and had yet to progress from moody temper tantrums.

"Draco!" his mother yelled for the fourth time. Her voice had been growing progressively closer with each shrill shout, and now it was right outside his door. She rapped sharply. "Draco!"

"Coming, Mother!" he huffed, pushing himself off of his bed. He made his way to the door, mumbling all the while. When his father had first been sentenced, Draco had been overwhelmed with feelings of relief because locked up in Azkaban the way he was, Lucius would be unable to see Draco's OWL results. While topics such as Potions, Dark Arts, and Ancient Runes had been high, Astronomy had been decidedly low, and Draco was inclined to defer the announcement of that news. Now, however, Lucius' absence was starting to grate on Draco's nerves for several reasons. One, he knew that having a father in prison was not the best way to make a name for oneself, even if one's father was one of the richest men in England. Two, and more importantly, Draco was sick to death of dealing with his mother.

He plastered a smile on his face as he opened the door. "Yes?"

Narcissa was standing there, her usually elegant blond hair streaming down her shoulders in white-blond waves. Her pale features were tinted an angry red. She had never looked so much like the mythological Lady of Shalotte, in the throws of madness. Now, she was holding a crumpled-up piece of parchment so tight in her fist that her knuckles had turned as white as starch. She brandished her fist at him. "What on Earth is the meaning of this?" she shrieked at him.

Draco didn't flinch at the volume of her voice, but he did go through a mental list of everything he had done in the past week that would have led his mother to be so outraged. Coming up blank, he simply leaned back against the doorjamb. "I don't know," he said, "but I assume that you're going to tell me."

Narcissa's nostrils flared. "This is a letter," she shook the offending object under Draco's nose, "from Lucretius Parkinson."

Draco groaned inwardly. He now knew what had thrown his mother into such a fit of righteous indignation and he really didn't feel like dealing with it at the moment. Draco did not like Pansy Parkinson for a number of reasons, but the biggest one was that he was supposed to like her. Since he birth he had had expectations drilled into his skull by his father, his mother, his class. One of those expectations had been an engagement to Pansy Parkinson, the most insipid, whinny, pretentious tart in Slytherin House. She had been sending him owls all summer and last week he had finally had enough of it and had replied with a scathing, but accurate analysis, of his true feelings for her. Apparently, despite the satisfaction that he had gained from watching his eagle owl sail into the horizon, replying as such was had not been in his best interest.

"What in Merlin's name did you say to that poor, innocent child?" his mother shrilled, taking menacing steps towards him, still waving the parchment in his face.

Draco backed away from her. "Nothing she hadn't had coming to her," he drawled, trying to keep fear from showing on his face. It was amazing that Narcissa, who was now a good three centimeters shorter than her sixteen-year-old son, could still strike fear into him. But then, Draco liked to say to himself, even grizzly bears fear rabid terriers.

Narcissa let out a wail that Draco was certain would crack crystal. He winced. "If only your father were here!" she shrieked, still advancing towards him, her eyes cracking with rage; Draco hoped that she had misplaced her wand and it wasn't in easy reach. "He would teach you what it means to be a Malfoy! The obligations! The pride!"

She had now backed him into the room and against the dark cherry wood of his bedpost. He had nowhere else to go at this point and his wand was in the bureau across the room. "Have you seen Pansy Parkinson, Mother?" Draco asked her, still trying to retain his calm in the face of his lunatic mother. "She's not an innocent girl, she's a sexually promiscuous rodent."

Narcissa was breathing heavily. Lucius had once sat Draco down in the library and told him about his aunt Bellatrix who was serving time in Azkaban for torturing the Longbottoms. Aunt Bellatrix was by far his father's favorite relative, and Draco had found himself wondering whether she and his father had had an affair: Lucius' eyes would take on the same glazed look that Draco saw in Blaise Zabini's eyes when she looked at Oliver Wood. But the stories Lucius related about Bellatrix's mania made Draco somewhat grateful that he could not remember meeting her. But he had seen the pictures in the papers when she escaped, and despite the marked differences in coloring, Narcissa currently looked eerily like her twin sister.

This was not comforting.

Narcissa's breathing began to slow, and she started to straighten. "Look," she said, her voice as cold as his father's at his most dangerous, "I don't give a damn if you do not like Pansy Parkinson. This match was not made for your benefit; it was made for the good of both families. The Parkinsons are wealthy, influential, and the only family currently worthy of a match with this one." Draco tried not to roll his eyes. "You will apologize to Pansy Parkinson, or you will be sorry." She held up a white finger. "And if you don't, you will face your father when he returns at the end of the month. Don't test me, Draco. I will not let you ruin the future of this family. It took a serious blow in June and it will not take another one because of you." And with that she whirled around and stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind her so violently that Draco was convinced the door-frame was going to detach itself from the wall.

"Why couldn't it have been Blaise Zabini?" Draco asked, the moment the reverberations from the door had calmed. Draco had wanted to ask Blaise to the Yule Ball fourth year, but had opted out of that when his father had sent him a threatening note at breakfast one morning. He had then thanked a god he didn't believe in that it hadn't been a howler and accepted the fact that he was being forced into Pansy Parkinson. Before Christmas fourth year, Draco couldn't wait to have sex. Then, as Pansy tried to seduce him that night in one of the dungeon classrooms, he had decided that it would be better to wait until a more appealing specimen made herself available. Now, whenever he thought about Pansy standing before him in a lacy pink negligee, he felt a need for a stiff shot of Hogden's Firewhisky.

He had considered trying out one of the other Slytherin girls, both the younger ones and the older ones, but he hadn't actually gotten around to it yet. It was odd that Slytherin's reigning Prince, a role that Malfoy had inherited from his father, was still technically a virgin. Not that Draco liked to think about that rather embarrassing tid-bit of information. He was pretty sure that almost everyone in his class had popped their cherries, at least in the Slytherin House, and he had a suspicions about the Mudblood and the Weasel, although when he was feeling particularly uncharitable the Mudblood morphed into Potty.

The reasons his parents had succumbed to worthless antiquated traditions and chosen Pansy for him was only something that Draco could speculate at. He suspected that it had to do with the fact that Lucretius Parkinson was one of the primary boardmembers of a Muggle-Wizarding technology-developing company. Draco knew that as much noise as Slytherins made about the pointlessness of Muggle technology, the shrewd businessmen among them saw the economic advantages of introducing Muggle techniques to the Wizarding world.

The 1990's version of class-intermarriage.

Draco let out a sigh and walked over to his vanity table. He stared carefully at the reflection in the mirror, making sure that he hadn't developed any new blemishes that he'd need to have hexed away, or that his hair was not a frightful mess after his impulsive nap. As usual, the pale blond boy stared back stonily at him, gray eyes half-closed languidly and an arrogant pull to his mouth. It was the face of an angel, or so Pansy liked to tell him in loopy, curly script when she sent her perfumed, pink letters. This had done nothing to ingratiate her into Draco's good will. If anything, it had only made his disgust with her more pronounced.

He turned away from the mirror and walked back over to his bed where his father's book was still discarded carelessly face down. Draco knew that the stiff leather spine cracked when he left it that way, but since it would be another few weeks yet until Lucius was let out of Azkaban, he didn't think that concern for the book should be forefront on his priorities list.

It was truly amazing how his father managed to wriggle out of inconvenient situations. He managed to waltz out of the Department of Mysteries with only a fine and a two month sentence to Azkaban. Considering that Sturgis Podmere had been sentenced to three months and a large fine, despite the fact that he had clearly been under the Imperious curse at the time, Lucius had gotten off extraordinarily lightly. And, there was always the very simple truth that Lucius had been picked up in the company of four escaped Death Eaters, and in the wake of a serious battle that had left one person dead and several Hogwarts students in various states of incapacitation. Not that Draco didn't wish they'd all died right along with Sirius Black.

But it didn't seem very likely that anyone would ever manage to kill Harry Bloody Potter. Or the Weasel and the Mudblood, and the Weasel's little sister, and all of their wretched, Gryffindor friends.

Draco smiled thinly to himself. What his father didn't seem to realize was that there was one very simple way to get Draco to join the Death Eater fold: give him the opportunity to kill Harry Potter. But that would never happen; Voldemort had his own grudge against The-Boy-Who-Lived and he wasn't going to permit Draco to get in the way of his little exercise in vengeance. Of course - and this is why Draco was having trouble following blindly in his parents' footsteps - he hadn't been all that successful at it. Having sat in the same Potions class with Potter for five years, Draco knew perfectly well that there was nothing particularly special about him or his friends, and he was beginning to think that Voldemort's inability to kill him was only a sign of fallibility. And as a Malfoy, he hated weakness above all things. Why Lucius and Narcissa didn't see that the Dark Lord's fall would come because of vanity, he didn't know; it seemed perfectly obvious to Draco. Sure, he made a lot of noise about the Dark Journey when he was busy menacing Potter and his followers, but he didn't mean any of it. Not really: he just enjoyed the outraged looks that flashed on their prissy little faces.

But it was not particularly likely that Voldemort would ever condescend to letting a minion off the Great Harry Potter. And above all things, that was what Draco wanted to do. It was his mission in life, and he was damned if he was going to let Voldemort's vanity get in his bloody way.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Portia had gone out that day with the sole intention of picking up groceries. Minerva's visit had thrown things into sharp relief, and she had realized that she didn't have anything left in her refrigerator and she had run out of cash during the last run to the Tobacconist's. Errands thus became a necessary evil.

While Portia hated many things, errands were close to the top of the list, particularly when she was being forced to buy Real Things as opposed to luxury vices. While she enjoyed eating and reading and reaping the benefits of consumerism, she didn't much like leaving her apartment to do it. Minerva had once asked her if she had Xeroderma Pigmentosa, which prevented her from leaving the livingroom. Portia had acknowledged the barb and assured her guardian that no, she was just a hermit. And, as a witch living in the Muggle world, the combination of Owl Post and e-mail made it very, very easy to avoid the outside world.

It was a beautiful, sunny Paris morning; slightly too warm for Portia's tastes, but perfect for strolling along the wide boulevards. Which was a luxury that every tourist in town seemed to be exploiting to its utmost. Dogs were everywhere: large Labradors, small bichons, middling setters. As a self-professed cat person, Portia was somewhat intimidated by dogs. In her more introspective moments, she wondered if there had been a moment in her youth where she had been attacked by a dog. If so, nothing remained in her memory except the feeling of unease that crept up her spine when she was around them.

It had been a while since Portia had crossed La Manche, but she remembered London poignantly. It was loud, dirty, and closed off. No one could say the same of Paris. Portia made her way through the July crowds, which were bustling and busy, but tolerable. If Napoleon III had done anything for Paris, it was to rebuild the entire town, thereby assuring that nothing ever towered over the shifting crowds below and both sunshine and cool breezes could make their way down and reach the hordes of people that bustled about daily life.

She had never been Stateside, but she couldn't imagine actually living in a city where every building was over six stories tall.

Portia lived fairly close to the river, in an apartment on the uppermost floor of one of the Napoleon creations. The rent was exorbitant, particularly in the area she lived, but that sort of thing didn't really trouble her all that much; the land-lord was a wizard and had given her a discount in the rent for solidarity's sake. Then there was the simple matter of her inheritance, most of which was still cooling in one of Gringotts' London vaults. She had them transfer a certain amount each month into a normal Muggle checking account, from which she paid the rent, shopped for groceries (more often paid for take-out), and generally bought things she needed. Periodically she would earn a little extra by providing her translation services whenever an interesting want-ad appeared in the paper.

She shifted effortlessly through the weekend crowds, intent on reaching a cash machine so that she could go about her basic errands and potentially make a side-step into the Librarie on the corner. While she would never have admitted it to Minerva, Portia's mouth watered for fresh pineapple, strawberries, and grapes. Her daily diet contained a lot more fruit then she let Minerva believe, and the apple she had munched the day her guardian had come to visit had been the end of her stash.

Paris was known for its fruit stands, which could be located on nearly every corner. And unlike at the grocery store, the selection was always tip-top and perfect.

She rushed through the basics before she made the planned detour to the bookstore. Her arms were laden down with bags of fruit, cheese, milk, and a rather awkward loaf of bread. Still, all she was planning to do was browse the new release and foreign language sections; it wasn't one of her usual trips to the bookstore, which tended to take hours and generally encompassed an entire afternoon.

Thus, overburdened and slightly damp from the heat and exertion caused by half a dozen bags and a loaf of bread, she sidled her way through the door and walked towards the new release section. She scanned the spines for something that looked interesting. If there was a maxim that pissed off Portia more than anything, it was that age-old piece of two-bit wisdom, "You can never judge a book by its cover." You could always judge a book by its cover, and Portia was one to have little respect for books with poor titles. She placed her shopping bags at her feet and reached for the latest Christian Jacq book about Ramses II. They were inaccurate, and Portia knew it, but they were juicy enough that she didn't much care, and she had never been one to damn romantic stories just because they were unrealistic and not literary enough for the critics. And Christian Jacq was very literary.

But, and she knew this the moment she picked the book up, the summer holidays were coming to a close. At Beauxbatons, it was difficult to catch up on Muggle reading, and Portia had spent much of her past few summers expanding her list of completed classics. She had finished Dickens, Hardy, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and any number of others, but she had only read a third of Zola's Rogon-Macquart cycle. Hogwarts, should she choose to pacify Minerva and attend in the fall, would probably be as deficient as Beauxbatons in classic Muggle literature. It was a problem throughout the wizarding world and one that continued to grate at her nerves to no end.

She figured that she at least owed to her education to check and see if Nina was on the shelf. She shifted the packages in her arms and bent down to pick up the two bags she had put on the floor.

Coincidence was something that had always bothered Portia, and when she looked back on this chance meeting later, she had to admit that what followed was about as clichéd as one could get, right down to the avalanche of books knocked down from the shelves in the process.

It was just chance that she bent down to pick up her bag just as a tall man chose to round the corner, cutting the distance a little too close. Portia, already balanced precariously, was unable to withstand the added strain of being run-over from the side. She toppled over into a pile of dark hair, long legs, bags of fruit, and curses.

"Oh, I do beg your pardon," said the cause of her distress, in English. "I didn't see you there."

Portia struggled out from under her purchases painfully aware of the crushed loaf of bread underneath her arm. She sat up and brushed her hair out of her eyes. "Clearly," she replied dryly.

The man before her was good-looking, with dirty blond hair and very green eyes. His face was narrow and well-made, with a slightly crooked nose that made Portia less-inclined to be angry with him for knocking her over. At the moment, his mouth was turned-up in an apologetic smile and his hand was outstretched as a conciliatory gesture. "I really am sorry," he continued on in an English that was tinted with an American accent. "I don't generally make a habit of running into people overburdened with -" his eyes flicked down to the floor where Portia's newly-purchased pears were lolling about on the floor "- fresh fruit."

For her part, Portia had come to the conclusion that she was willing to forgive on looks alone. She smiled at him and shifted a lock of hair behind her ear. No doubt she looked a frightful mess, which was only serving to make her more self-conscious. She took his hand and he pulled her to her feet and gave her a grin that made her toes curl. "Portia McKinnon."

He shifted his grip on her fingers so that, before she knew what had hit her, he was shaking her hand. "Michael O'Neil."

"Hello, Michael O'Neil," replied Portia, feeling awkward. She released his hand quickly and smiled awkwardly. "Welcome to Paris."

He grinned again and looked sheepish. "That obvious?"

She nodded. "That's alright though. You Americans seem to think that we Parisians look down on you for your lack of culture, inability to speak foreign languages, and poor manners. Well, you'd be absolutely right."

He laughed then, a deep, rich sound that made Portia grin back. "You're a fine one to talk," he replied to her in perfectly-intoned French, "considering that, judging from your accent anyway, you're not French, either. English, no? Perhaps with a hint of Scotts?"

"And you'd be perfectly correct," Portia shot back in the same language, "but I've been living here for years."

He bent down and casually started to put the fruit back into the basket one-by-one. "And what makes you think that I haven't?"

She squatted down so that they were once again at equal eyelevel. "Really, nothing, but poking fun at American gaucheness is really one of the most amusing past-times out there." She morosely picked up the squashed loaf of bread. "Well, it's still edible at least."

Michael smiled. "This is quite the load," he replied, straightening the bag. "Do you need help?"

Portia raised her eyebrows. "No, but thank you. I live just down the street."

He pushed himself up. "It's no problem. I have nowhere I have to be." He glanced at his watch. "At least not for the next two hours."

Portia considered. He looked honest and sincere; she didn't think that he was a rapist or murderer. And he was so very good-looking. She grinned. It would be nice not to have to carry the bags up the six flights of stairs by herself. Nevermind the fact that she usually apparated the distance, but it would be nice none-the-less. And of course, she could always deliver a nasty hex if he tried anything unwanted.

"If it's really not going to be a problem," she replied, "then certainly. The lift is broken again and I could always use the help."

He grinned and took two of the bags that Portia was holding. "Alright then."

She picked up the Christian Jacq book. "I have to pay first, though."

"That's fine."

She studied him for a second before she darted off towards the register. He really was quite attractive; sunny, open, clearly educated, everything that she could possibly want. And if he proved to be interested in her, there might still be enough time for some sort of summer fling before she went back to either Beauxbatons or Hogwarts, depending on her decision.

She handed the money to the woman behind the cash register, still lost in her own thoughts about the possible ramifications of a relationship. There was always the fact that he was no doubt older than she was, too. While she was of legal wizarding age, she was still only seventeen, a fact that might prove to be a problem to his Yank sensibilities.

The woman handed her the change with a smile. "Good-looking young man," she remarked wisely.

Portia looked up, startled. "Pardon?"

"Oh nothing," she replied with a smile and a wink.

Portia grinned at her and rushed back to Michael, who was leaning casually against one of the shelves, perusing a book about anarchists. "Ready?" he asked her, placing the book back on the shelf where he had picked it up. He leaned down and lifted up three of the bags at his feet. "Lead the way."

Picking up the last two bags, she led him out the door and onto the sunny Parisian street.

"So," she began by way of a conversational catalyst, "what are you doing in Paris?"

"Well, my mother's French, so she's been agitating to get me to return to the motherland for some time now. I had some extra money and some extra time, so I thought that now was as good a time as any. I'm leaving in a month, though."

"Does she still have family here?"

"No, not really. None that she's close to, anyway." He turned and smiled at her. "What about you? What's a nice English girl like yourself doing on your own in big, bad Paris?"

Portia shrugged, figuring that it was best to give as much of the truth as possible without revealing the witch-thing or the fact that she would be going back to school at the end of the summer. "I've lived on this side of the Chunnel most of my life; went to school here and I'm going to University in the fall." That, of course, was a lie, but it didn't really matter. She glanced up. "Well, this is it. I wasn't exaggerating when I said it was just down the street."

Michael grinned and Portia set the bag down on the front stoop so that she could open the door with keys. Usually she just Alohamora-ed it, but that would probably. The door swung open and she began the long trek up the stairs. Her six-fag a day habit prevented her from talking at all as she tried to keep from huffing and puffing her way up the stairs. It seemed like an eternity before they reached her door at the very top floor. She opened it and tossed the bags onto the worn carpet. "And we're here!" she exclaimed with relief.

She turned to Michael, who was still standing in the doorway, bags in hand. She took them from him with a smile. "Thank you very much," she said gratefully. She paused awkwardly, trying to think of something witty or intelligent to say. The pause between them grew longer.

He was the first to break the silence. "Um," he began, rather inexpertly, "I was wondering if you were busy tonight. We could see a movie or get dinner, maybe?"

Portia smiled brightly. "Sure. What time?"

Michael looked relieved and rubbed a hand against the back of his head. "Seven alright with you?"

"Yes," she grinned again.

"Good then. I'll pick you up here?"

"Great. I'll be ready."

"Okay." He made to go, but he was clearly unsure of the proper way to do it. He looked so boyish, standing there in the doorway, his blond hair mussed and his green eyes uncertain.

With an impulse that Portia would have been hard-pressed to justify, she picked him quickly on the cheek. Startled at her own gesture, she drew back quickly. "Right," she said, confused about how to proceed. "See you at seven."

Portia waited for him to their plans off, thinking that he would be squeamish about her impulsive, overly-familiar gesture, but he didn't. "Okay," he said again. "Seven." And with that, he turned, and began to walk down the stairs.

Still thrown off balance, Portia stood in the doorway, listening to his retreating footsteps. Her lips, where they had come into contact with the slight bristle on his cheek, were rough. She touched them with her fingertips thoughtfully.

She wasn't sure how long she stood there in her doorway dumbly. Michael O'Neil. Michael. She kept repeating his name over and over again to herself. In the end, it was Cognac who broke her reverie. He meowed and rubbed his orange head against her legs.

She bent down and picked him up. His fur was soft and he purred as she scratched his chin. "Well," she told the cat, "looks like it's a date.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Harry Potter had spent the entire summer staring morosely out of his bedroom window. This was nothing different from what he usually did, but he was having even more difficulty then usual making it to the point where he could join Ron and Hermione at the Burrow.

There hadn't been any letters to Sirius to write, and now that the war was being fully recognized by the Ministry, there hadn't been any letters from Ron and Hermione, either. His only company had been Hedwig, who showed up fairly often to keep him company, but could be frequently seen at night in the general neighborhood looking for food.

At the beginning of this forced exile, Lupin and Mad-Eye Moody had assured him that they'd take him away sooner rather then later, but that promise had yet to become a reality. The year before, Harry would have been angry about all of the false promises, but he was far too tired to be angry. And Sirius' death had thrown everything into sharp relief: no matter how much it seemed that Dumbledore and the others were keeping him in ignorance, it was best to keep his anger bottled up for Voldemort. No point in making enemies of allies.

But, in the hopes that they'd be showing up soon to take him away, he had never actually unpacked. For the first time in his life, his room was actually clean, as Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had locked him in the house. After the fiasco of the previous summer, they were not about to let him out on the streets where he could bring undue chaos on the calm, suburban serenity of Privet Drive. He might as well clean his room: all of his summer assignments were done - had been so for a while - and he didn't have much else to do besides pick-up after himself.

The bright-side of being stuck in the house all day was that that was where Dudley rarely was. Ever the juvenile delinquent, he was constantly out roaming the streets looking for a fight and avoiding his mother's smothering embrace. In that respect, Harry couldn't really blame him for fleeing Aunt Petunia's constant "Duddykins". He was about to grow crazy from them himself.

He had taken to reading over the summer. With nothing else to do, he had gone through the downstairs library, which had all of the old classics - placed there for posterity's sake - and had taken them up to his room and read them one by one. He suspected that he was the only person to have ever read them, as when he opened the copy of A Tale of Two Cities, the spine cracked, almost as if the book had never been opened. Which didn't cause all that much of a surprise. Apart from the deplorable state of his books, Hermione would certainly approve of both his hobby, and of his choice of material.

But he was quickly running out, and he didn't much relish digging into Aunt Petunia's self-help collection or Uncle Vernon's back issues of his semi-annual "Drills in a New Europe" magazine. Harry suspected that their membership was a thousand world-wide and climbing.

Needless to say, it was not shaping up to being an exciting summer, and as his birthday continued to inch ever closer, keeping his sense of loneliness from morphing into one of despair was becoming somewhat more difficult.

He had found in the last two weeks or so that he had Good Days and he had Bad Days. On Good Days, he found himself in an almost zen-like serenity, perfectly content with life and everything about it. These were the days when he made sizeable dents in Uncle Vernon's unread Dickens anthology. Bad Days, however, lived up to their name in every respect, and even surpassed it. Those days he would lie on his bed and stare up at the crack in the ceiling. If he thought at all, it was only to draw connecting lines between the cracks so that they made pictures.

Two days before his sixteenth birthday, he was having a Bad Day. He had woken up at 11:30 to Aunt Petunia pounding on his door; she may have been blood, but she was still bloody hateful. He had grabbed a set of clothes, headed off to the bathroom, took a shower, went downstairs and stole some of Dudley's potato chips for breakfast, returned to his room and plopped on his bed.

Hence his surprise when he first heard the raspy shout: "Move out o my way, you confounded wretch!"

Harry, who had finally come to the conclusion that the largest crack in his ceiling rather closely resembled the Horn of Africa, didn't even notice that anything unusual was happening in normal, austere number 4 Privet Drive. It wasn't until Uncle Vernon roared back: "How can you command me to do such a thing in my own house, you - y - you Freak!"

It was the "freak" that triggered Harry's brain. "Moody!" he cried, sitting up so quickly that spots danced in front of his eyes for a moment. Not that a minor thing like a head-rush stopped him, though. He jumped off of his bed, flung open his bedroom door, and pounded down the stairs like a mad man.

"Moody!" he shouted, rushing down the stairs two at a time. "Lupin!"

And there they were; his salvation. Lupin looked up startled, but his surprise turned immediately to one of happiness the moment he saw Harry. "And here he is."

Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody had, naturally, glanced up when Harry had made his rather noisy appearance, but had immediately returned to his first task: holding his wand at Uncle Vernon, who had turned rather the opposite of his usual bright-red color. Uncle Vernon was muttering under his breath about the public danger that wizardy presented.

"Hello, Harry," said Mad-Eye without taking his eyes off of his prey. "Sorry we're late, but we had a bit of difficulty convincing Fudge that letting you out of this prison wouldn't cause some sort of public safety risk."

Lupin gave Harry a quick, warm hug. "Are you packed?"

"I never unpacked!" exclaimed Harry happily. He turned to Mad-Eye, who was eyeing Uncle Vernon with his one good eye while the electric blue one was rolled back into his head, no doubt looking at Aunt Petunia, who was cowering in the corner of the living room. "You can let them go now."

Moody jabbed his wand at Uncle Vernon, who flinched, but started to redden with rage. "Are you sure?"

Uncle Vernon started spluttering. "Do you think I want to keep the boy, you bleeding idiot?!?" He continued to redden at an impressive rate.

Moody squinted his good eye at Harry's uncle. "Then why did you try to attack me when I opened the door?"

Uncle Vernon was nearly purple at this point. "How the hell was I supposed to know who you were? Haven't you people ever heard of knocking?"

Lupin smiled. "Well, Mr. Dursley, I could have sworn that I sent you an owl last week forewarning you of our arrival."

Uncle Vernon fumed, but didn't reply. Moody, apparently satisfied that Vernon did not pose an immediate threat, lowered his wand but did not put it away. "Come on, Harry," he said. "Get your trunk."

Harry grinned at him and bounded up the stairs to his room. He snatched Hedwig's cage and knocked the lid of the trunk down with a slam.

"I really am sorry, Harry," said Lupin from the doorway. "I'm sure you understand just how difficult it is to circumvent Fudge when his blood is up. Even for Dumbledore."

Harry was past caring. "Yeah. Helped me get caught up on my Muggle literature."

Lupin pulled out his wand and smiled. "Wengardium Leviosa," he said. He raised one salt-and-pepper eyebrow. "Oh really?" he asked, guiding Harry's trunk out through the door and into the hall. "Which authors did you read?"

Harry followed the trunk out into the hall. "Well, Uncle Vernon likes to give the impression that he's an educated man, so he's got the complete works of Dickens and the like. I made it through A Tale of Two Cities, Tess D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy, some others." He smiled to himself. "They all start to blend together after awhile, though."

Lupin laughed. "Don't tell Hermione you said that. She'll never speak to you again."

Harry grinned. "I wouldn't; I value my life far too highly." They reached the bottom of the stairs. "Am I going to the Burrow? Will I get a chance to see Ron and Hermione?"

"Of course you're going to the Burrow," said Mad-Eye as he glared at Uncle Vernon. "Where else would we put you?"

No doubt Moody hadn't realized the implications of what he had just said, because he seemed unfazed even while Remus inadvertently cringed behind him. The obvious answer, of course being, A year ago you would have gone to live with Sirius. These days, not so much. Harry brushed off the renewed tightness in his chest. "Right."

Moody narrowed his good eye Harry, obviously sensing some sort of distress, but being Moody, he didn't say anything.

Lupin covered up the awkwardness with renewed energy and bustle. "Well, we'd best get going, then." He turned and bowed to Uncle Vernon. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience, sir." He repeated the gesture to Aunt Petunia and walked out of the door, Harry's trunk levitating low to the ground behind him.

"Goodbye, Uncle Vernon. Aunt Petunia," Harry offered lamely. "See you next summer." Uncle Vernon glared by way of reply, and Aunt Petunia whimpered.

Moody just growled and ushered Harry out of the door. He slammed it shut behind him.

Lupin turned around on the front walk. "Now, Harry, Moody was going to apparate with your trunk. Arabella Figg is letting us use her fireplace so we can Floo you to the Weasleys'."

Harry opened his mouth to reassure Lupin that he understood, but Moody interjected. He was standing hunched over on the sidewalk, his normal eye scanning the street for any signs of suspicious activity while his magic one went haywire. He couldn't have looked more out of place on a suburban London street. "Remus," he growled, "do you think you could speed this up a bit?"

A smile played at the corners of Lupin's mouth, but he nodded. He let Harry's trunk float its way towards Mad-Eye, who, with his wand concealed under his long, black sleeve, took over its control.

Harry knew that Moody would never have agreed to this assignment if he was only permitted Lupin as backup. Eagerly, Harry scanned the quite street for any sign of wizardry. A little girl was playing with a doll in the yard across the street; Harry knew that the family that lived there didn't have any children younger than 18. The little girl seemed to sense that Harry was looking at her. She glanced up from her doll. Even from across the street, Harry could see the grin that split her mouth and, as he continued to watch, her nose grew larger and redder until it was roughly the size and color of a prize-winning tomato.

Moody let out another growl. "Damn her," he mumbled, clearly referring to Tonks. "She's going to blow our cover."

Remus did laugh then. "She's less suspicious than either you or me, Alastor. Come on, Harry. He is right about one thing, at least, the longer we stay here, the more likely it is that we will draw some sort of unwanted attention."

Harry grinned and followed Lupin as he started off around the block. Behind him, there was a loud pop as Moody apparated away.